Small Business Saturday: Lev’s Shoe & Leather Repair

A cobbler sticks to his last: Lev Smelyansky, owner of Lev's Shoe & Leather Repair on Central, a 20 year old repair shop in the heart of Albany's uptown.

“People don’t fix things anymore. They throw them away,” says Lev Smelyansky. That’s a problem when you run a repair business.

Smelyansky owns Lev’s Shoe & Leather Repair, a shop that specializes in repairing shoes and handbags. In an age where everyone believes objects are temporary, the concept of repair is a difficult one to get across. “Nobody learns this. Nobody does this,” he says.

Supply has taken notice. Lots of shoe repair businesses are gone, and with them, shoe store suppliers. But then, not every shoe is worth repairing, Smelyansky says. Some shoes—because they’re cheaply made—are too time-consuming and therefore costly to fix. As we talk, one customer comes in about having ski boots and lacings fixed, but Lev would essentially need to remake the entire shoe. He can do it, but the cost is prohibitive. Good shoes really are worth buying, if only because they can be repaired instead of replaced.

Otherwise, repair really isn’t worthwhile because at a certain point, you’re investing more in repairs than the shoe is worth, Smelyansky says. “Most question, not if I can do it, most question, ‘How much?’ We always get back to the question of how much,” says Smelyansky.

Of course, there are exceptions to that rule—Smelyansky has one customer who brings in a pair of shoes once a year to fix. At this point, there’s probably very little of the original shoe left, he says. But now we have moved from economic theory to Theseus’s paradox, namely, “If your shoe is replaced bit by bit, when does it cease to be your shoe and become something else?” It’s a transition Lev doesn’t mind making, but he is also the same person who shrugs good-naturedly when I ask him about the future of a business that is quickly being outmoded. “Is that okay?” I ask.

“Okay? What means okay?” he responds. Smelyansky never had any hopes that he would pass this business on to his children, who are both happily employed as attorneys in Glenmont.

Smelyansky’s accent—he immigrated from the USSR in 1987—adds a momentous quality to his comments, and make him sound perhaps more stoic than he means to. Or perhaps his sentiments are perfectly expressed. After all, the shoe repair business has supported his family for 20 years. Isn’t that the measure of success—or, as I so blandly put it, ‘okayness’?

Lev’s tiny shop is located in the first floor apartment of a house the couple owns on Central Avenue, directly across the street from the Blessed Sacrament School. The shop is small, shoe shaped really, with a neat counter dividing the waiting room from the repair shop. A shoe in the final stages of repair is spread across Smelyansky’s workbench, just waiting reassembly. His tools sit beside it, an ancient looking hammer with a well-worn handle. The shelves above the bench are stacked with rubber soles and tiny cobbler’s nails displayed in clear plastic containers. On the other side of the bench, shelves are crowded with repaired items including shoes, purses, and clothing that are awaiting pick-up. The waiting area is small and sparsely decorated, but does include a beautiful full color poster of the monumental St. Basil’s Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin lit up at night.

Smelyansky and his wife applied to leave Russia in 1979, but it wasn’t until 1987, in the wake of Gorbachev’s oft-maligned glastnost, that Smelyansky, his wife and two young children, 3 and 7, were actually permitted to leave the country.

Upon arriving in the U.S., Smelyansky, who had an engineering degree, was not able to find a job in his field. Instead, he took a job at Michael’s Shoe Repair in Schenectady to support the family. His wife went to school to become a dental hygienist, and Smelyansky learned a trade at the shoe shop. Five years later, he opened his own repair shop at the Broadway Arcade building, and then five years later, he moved to a new location to the house the couple purchased on Central Avenue. Over the business’s 20-year history, Smelyansky has fixed hundreds, perhaps thousands of shoes, from valuable designer pumps to dearly loved walking shoes, and he’s been able to support his family and put two children through college and then law school. Now, the demand for shoe repair is fading, a trend Smelyansky obligingly chalks up to evolution, the same way we now need gadgets we had no use for 20 years ago; “We cannot live now without cell phone,” he points out helpfully.

At that moment the glass door opens, and another customer makes his way into the shop looking to get a pair of brown Oxford-style dress shoes repaired. Eureka! Smelyansky says it’s an easy repair and well worth the investment.

The customer is pleased. This is his first time to the shop. Now that he knows Smelyansky is here, he’ll be back, he says.

5 Responses

I love this place! Lev does a great job at a fair price. He even replaced a zipper in our suitcase, so we were able to keep using it rather than buying a new one. I am so surprised to hear that this is a second career for him. His work is so good that I figured he learned it at his parents’ knee. Highly recommended.

He did such an incredible job replacing the soles on a pair of shoes I’ve had forever. I was not expecting them to turn out as well as they did. Not only was the replacement absolutely perfect, but he shined them beautifully, which I had thought was a lost cause. If you have a pair of shoes that is important to you, this is the place to take them. Thanks again, Lev!